September 2020: Callous-Unemotional Traits and Gun Violence

Executive Editor Michael Roy speaks with Emily Robertson, M.A., and Paul Frick, Ph.D., about their article on the role that callous-unemotional traits have in the risk for gun carrying and gun use during a crime.

Ms. Emily Robertson is a clinical psychology doctoral student in the Developmental Psychopathology Lab at Louisiana State University. This fall, she begins a predoctoral internship at the Mailman Center for Child Development in the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami. Dr. Paul Frick leads the Developmental Psychopathology Lab at LSU, where he is the Roy Crumpler Memorial Chair in the Department of Psychology. He holds a joint appointment in the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education at Australian Catholic University in Brisbane.

• Why gun violence in the United States has become a significant concern among young people [2:46]
• What are callous-unemotional traits, and how common are these traits in the general population? [4:10]
• Why the authors decided to examine the relationship between callous-unemotional traits and gun violence [5:46]
• How the authors identified the study population, and what covariates or other variables they included [6:35]
• How the authors determined whether callous-unemotional traits affected a number of variables related to gun violence [10:11]
• Discussion of the main hypothesis [11:16]
• How callous-unemotional traits interact with a number of covariates, and other risk factors, to influence the frequency of gun carrying after a first arrest and the status of peer gun carrying and ownership [13:31]
• Overall conclusions [15:18]
• Study limitations [16:58]
• Implications of the work on public policy or on health policy [18:45]
• Main takeaways for researchers, clinicians, and other mental health professionals [20:18]
• Recommendations for further research [21:48]

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